Death And The Monster
by filkertom
Summary: Everybody knows the Hulk is a monster, right? Funny about that. Written, and takes place, before Avengers: Age of Ultron. Slight language, one or two F-bombs, no pairings. Technically complete, but I could definitely continue it.


Ultimately, Tony blamed himself.

Well, okay. He blamed JARVIS. JARVIS had been running diagnostics on the Mark VII suit, modelling and soft-testing new circuitry configurations and different metals, and... Tony told him to do it. And programmed him to do it. And designed the computer, the OS, the sensors, and everything else. And the damn test ate up everything but the basic building functions for eighteen and a half minutes.

Which meant Tony got bored.

Which meant he did something really stupid.

He pulled out his Starkphone, and he went playing in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computer system.

The spider program he'd snuck into the Helicarrier, back at the very start of this nuthouse that was The Avengers, had been "removed" four times now, and hadn't been seen by S.H.I.E.L.D. technicians in at least six months. Ergo, S.H.I.E.L.D. was still an open book to Tony Stark.

And today Tony opened to the wrong page.

At which point, he blamed S.H.I.E.L.D.

It was a quick, concise read. He read it again, then checked a few of the references, and then stared at it for at least a minute before shouting, "PEPPER!"

"What's up, Tony?" came her voice, only slightly filtered by the PA so that it would be obvious she was not actually in the room.

"I need you up here right now. No joke."

He heard the very slight hesitation, as she resisted the urge to say something like _Who are you and what have you done with Tony Stark?_ "Right there."

"Thank you." This was bad. Very, very bad.

Pepper exited the elevator less than a minute later. "What's up?"

"Take a look at this." Tony handed her the phone.

Pepper looked. Slowly her mouth fell open. "You're kidding."

"Apparently not. Which leads to 'why'."

Pepper looked as if she was going to stamp her foot. "How many ways does S.H.I.E.L.D. have to jack you guys around? Are you gonna tell Bruce?"

"I think we have to. On one level, it'll be an incredible relief to him, but... yeah, he hates being manipulated. Even if it's supposedly for his own good."

" _Everybody_ hates being manipulated, Tony. But, my god, he's -" She met his gaze. "We may lose him."

Tony pressed his lips together. "Might. Or he might just go green on S.H.I.E.L.D., starting with Nick. Which would be entertaining on a certain level - Nick Fury saying "I wet 'em" and all that - but not very useful." He contemplated a moment more, then glanced toward the ceiling. "Bruce? You there?"

"In the gamma lab, Tony. Something up?"

Tony hissed through his teeth. "Is it something you can leave for a bit?"

"Oh, yeah, just waiting for JARVIS to finish whatever you're doing so I can run a wavelength filter. I'll be right there."

Tony got up and poured himself a drink, and one for Pepper, and after a moment one for Bruce, who came in the door just in time to take it from Tony's hand. He looked at it as if it might bite him. "Ooooookay. Greeting me with alcohol is not a good sign."

Tony gestured with his glass toward the larger room, and they all sat, Bruce in the recliner and Tony and Pepper on the sofa. A minute ticked by, then another. At last, Tony said, "I found something. Something not good."

"Define 'not good'," said Bruce.

"Well, it's good _and_ it's not-good. Kinda like winning the world poker championship, and then finding out all the other players were letting you win."

Bruce tilted his head. "Gotta admit, I'm so lost right now."

"Tony... found your... file," said Pepper. "Your deep file. The one that's so secret that even the secret file doesn't know about it."

"In other words, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s even more paranoid than we think?"

"No, no, they're exactly as paranoid as we think." Tony finally sipped his drink. "Bruce... all those people that - that The Hulk killed -"

Banner started. He looked angry and mortified and horrified and he ground his teeth and glared at Tony so hard that Stark thought he would Hulk out right there and smash him to jelly.

At long last Bruce seemed to regain control of himself. Barely. His tendons stood out on his hands, his limbs trembling. "I thought - I don't know what I thought. I try to atone for those people every single day, and it will never ever be enough, and how _dare_ you, Tony!"

"I dare because you didn't kill them!"

Bruce actually began to push up from the recliner, apparently intent on lunging at Tony, until the words sunk in, and he stopped almost comically. He blinked several times. "What?"

"They overreported the casualties," said Pepper. "According to the records Tony found, the Hulk has tended to pick uninhabited areas to hide out. He's actually put himself between incoming attacks and civilians, to protect them."

"There have been some people killed," spoke up Tony, looking at his drink. "But they all seem to be collateral damage from attacks on the Hulk, rather than through anything he did. When you get all green and crazy, you try to break things without people in them. It's just been the bad luck of Harlem and Detroit that they have a lot of empty buildings. Hell, nearly everyone who died when you fought the Abomination was killed either by him or by the military trying to get both of you."

Bruce was looking back and forth between the two of them, gaping. "But -" And that was all he could manage. His face was agonized, trapped in the tension of a man rewriting himself.

Pepper began to stretch a hand toward Bruce. Tony's index finger rested on an app icon in his desk top, just one swipe from a four-alarm to the rest of the team.

With what seemed a huge effort, the slender scientist looked at his hands. "I didn't kill them," he sobbed. "I didn't kill them."

He all but collapsed in the chair, shoulders shaking, and Pepper was at his side instantly, making soft sounds and holding him. Tony let out a long, slow breath.

They all stayed like that for most of an hour. Then Tony and Pepper led Bruce to the bedroom, and Pepper lay down next to Bruce, holding him, while Tony sat at the bedside and had a hand ready for any manly comfort Bruce might need.

Tony's jaw worked back and forth. Most people thought he was a clown - all right, an incredibly brilliant, handsome, supergenius clown, but a clown nonetheless. They hadn't seen him deadly serious, and this was as deadly serious as it got. Someone had fucked with one of his friends, in a completely unforgivable way, and Tony would walk through hell for his friends. Twice so far, he literally had.

This wasn't over.

* * *

"Director Fury! Incoming! Banner is heading to your office, with Stark, Potts, and Rogers, and Banner's angry!"

Fury's right hand was already on his sidearm, his left over the button that would put the entire facility on red alert. "How angry, Hill?"

The door opened. Just opened, not exploded inward or anything like that. Banner was in the lead, and he looked... the same as usual, actually. Maybe breathing a little hard. Stark and Ms. Potts flanked him, with Rogers bringing up the rear. Normal clothes all around; nobody bracing for combat, not yet.

"Not green, sir, but... very angry," said Hill from the intercom.

"Thank you, Hill. I'll get back to you." Fury sat back in his chair, spreading his hands in half-welcome, half-showing-he-was-not-armed-at-the-moment. "Not that it's not always a joy to see you all, but is there a reason you busted into my office looking like you want to get in my face?"

"You knew," said Banner. "You knew the Hulk never killed anybody deliberately. You knew he never did it _accidentally_ , except when he was attacked by such overwhelming force that civilian deaths were impossible to avoid." A pause. "You KNEW!" And he slammed his palms down on the table with such force that Fury inhaled and leaned back an inch or two, as good as a flinch for him.

"You let me think," continued Banner, and was his complexion a little grayer than it had been just a moment ago? "that I - that the Hulk - had killed, basically, thousands of people. You let the _world_ think that. You let my _friends_ think that!" He let out a breath, another, and his shoulders sagged. "How long did you plan to guilt me into the Avengers?"

Fury pursed his lips. No point in playing coy. "As long as necessary. We need you, Doctor. We need your unique skill set -"

"You need the Hulk." Banner spat between clenched teeth. "You need the monster."

"You need the monster to have been reformed," chimed in Stark, "so he'll only destroy the bad things now."

"And, if things go wrong," said Rogers, "why, the Avengers are right there to rein him in."

"Which doesn't answer the core question," said Potts. "The Hulk is _not_ a monster, not a mindless engine of destruction, not a deliberate killer! Why let him, and us, think he was one?"

"You've got two assassins on the team," said Fury. "You don't seem to have a problem with that."

"Surprisingly enough," said Rogers, "they tend to worry much more about saving people than killing people. Funny how not being in it for the joy of inflicting death makes a difference. But that's not what we have with the Hulk. People think he's a monster, they think he just goes off because he can't _not_ go off, and S.H.I.E.L.D. encourages that, even though he's on the team!"

"Which would've been fine," said Banner in a very low voice, "or not really fine, but understandable... if you'd just. Told. Me.

"I have believed from the beginning that the deaths caused by the Hulk were my own personal hell, the guilt I had to pay for my hubris. I do something really stupid, the universe makes me a murderous force of nature, and also lets me think about each and every one of those people that the other guy killed. Now I find out the other guy _didn't_ kill them. Did his level best, in fact, to protect them from all the firepower _you_ and _Ross_ and the _Leader_ and everybody else on the damn planet have thrown at him. And _you knew._ And you didn't tell me -" he gestured toward his teammates "- and you didn't tell them.

"WHY?"

A green fist the size of a bowling ball smashed through Fury's desk like a brick through an matchbox. Fury jumped back, gun in hand.

But the Hulk just stood there, clothes shredded, chest heaving. Steve stood right with him. Stark had flinched a little, and Potts a little more, but they collected themselves almost instantly and returned to glaring at Fury.

And then the monster spoke. "Why?" His voice was cinderblock on asphalt, bone on gravel, desolation on pain.

Fury looked at him. Gradually the stubbornness on his face was joined by a resigned sadness. When he addressed the Hulk, it was in the same tone with which he'd address Banner, address any of his team, who deserved an explanation. "Because people _do_ think of you as a monster.

"Some of it started out as simply covering up for Ross's incompetence. His entire Hulkbuster unit was a decent idea, assuming we were actually after a rogue killer. But he was, bluntly, a little old-school Jack D. Ripper nutso. Mix that in with your situation with his daughter, and Col. Talbot, and the fact that Ross just plain didn't like you, and he and the Hulkbusters kept on going overboard.

"But later, it became useful. We could get large portions of the population to get the hell out of someplace in a big hurry just by crying Hulk. And, when the Hulk was being attacked, we could surreptitiously lend aid, claiming we were trying to destroy _two_ threats. We tried -"

Stark rolled his eyes. "Jesus. When you're an independent military power, every problem looks like a nail that has to be blown up."

"- WE TRIED to keep things as low-profile as possible. Now, obviously, that didn't work all the time."

"Or any time," snorted Potts.

"I had no choice."

By this point, Banner had calmed, shrunk, regained human form. His shirt hung in tatters from his shoulders. "You always had a choice," he said, baring his teeth slightly. "I've done everything short of drugging myself insensate to control the Hulk, up to and including trying to blow my own brains out. He's not smart by any stretch, but he's got a hell of a self-defense instinct. Anything he perceives as a threat, he will try to smash, and there's nothing he can't smash.

"It was very easy to think of him - of myself - as a killer." He gave a bleak laugh. "He knew better than I did."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" said Fury.

Banner thought a moment. "I don't know. Something to make me trust you. I really don't right now."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I will try to regain your trust."

Banner chuckled again. "You misunderstand. You never had it. I just didn't mistrust you that much.

"I'm gonna be unavailable for awhile. Tony can find me... if you need a monster."

And he turned and left.

No one said anything for a time. Then Rogers said, "I'm headed back to the Tower."

Stark and Potts murmured assent. "Stark," said Fury, "keep an eye on him."

Stark made a face at Fury. "Don't you get it? Bruce is a man. A very good man, who has been led to believe that a part of him is a raging killer. Now he finds out that isn't true, and you, one of the people who misled him in that, say you'll 'try to regain his trust'. He's never going to trust you again, Nick.

"Contrary to what you may think, the Avengers are not a bunch of weapons to be aimed at the Menace du Jour. Least of all that man. All he wanted to do was conduct his research - his _patriotic research_ , working on the frickin' Super Soldier program - and have a nice life with a girl he loved. He didn't want to be hunted by his girlfriend's crazy dad, who happens to have an army; he didn't want to be a superhero; and he damn sure didn't want to be a monster.

"He's been atoning for his sins for years... and now he finds out his sins were a P.R. stunt. You'd better just hope he only goes back to that free clinic in Calcutta."

And, with that, Stark and Potts left. Rogers started to follow, but Fury called his name. Rogers turned and eyed him speculatively. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Fury nodded. "Granted."

"I think you've forgotten, sir."

"Forgotten what?"

"What it was like when the Avengers started. One of our members was that man, who was, as far as we knew, uncontrollable. One was the brother of our target enemy. Two were trained assassins, one of whom had been suborned to the other side for a time, and the other of whom had her own long history. One was Tony, who we're lucky only has a few demons. And one was me. A man on whom Rip Van Winkle had nothing.

"All of us were looking for redemption... for a chance to be more than we were, more than we thought we were. And you... you went to bat for us, sir. You saw something greater than us, and you stood up for us, and how could we not make that work? If you were believed in us, and... Agent Coulson believed in us, and we were the best hope to save the entire planet if only we worked together, how could we not do that?"

"Your point, Captain?"

"My point, Colonel, is that we all have things to atone for, every one of us. But now Bruce has found out that his atonement was for a mountain of terrible acts _that he didn't actually do._ He's hardly innocent, but he's nowhere near as guilty as he, and we, and the world have been led to believe.

"I think that you kept that from us so that we'd have no compunction to stop him by any means necessary if he went rogue... or if you told us he went rogue, for whatever reason. He's just reverting to his natural killer self, right? And Bruce would've thanked us for killing him, for protecting all the lives he would've destroyed in his rage."

Fury said nothing, but his steady glare spoke volumes.

"Thing is, now we know. And maybe I won't tell, if you order me not to... but Tony will, and Pepper will do it with formal press releases and a campaign that'll make S.H.I.E.L.D. look like paranoid idiots, and Barton will just have fun with you all over the internet.

"And, most of all, we'll trust our teammate and friend that much more. You tried to leave a huge shadow of doubt, basically as a contingency plan. Now that's shot. And you've alienated someone very special, who thought you were on his side... _and_ you've pissed off his friends."

"And, whether you or he believes it or not, I am one of them," said Fury. "I am trying to balance the most delicate ongoing situation I've ever imagined, and I need all of you."

"Then you need to trust us, sir, and you need us to be able to trust you. With all due respect, you've screwed that up. And what's to say that, the next time you ask Bruce for help, he won't just tell you, and the whole damn world, to jump off a cliff?" He started to turn once more. "Or throw you off himself?"

"Banner knows his duty," said Fury.

Rogers stopped once more. "Yes. Yes, he does. Do you know yours to him?"

Saluting without a trace of irony, Captain America left Nick Fury with his thoughts.


End file.
